Angel:
Willow and
Tara's chanting reaches a deafening crescendo, their voices seeming to join
with thousands of others plucked straight out of the ether. The air in the
small room begins to swirl in a spinning vortex that whips the two witches'
hair away from their faces and pulls at their clothes. But they seem oblivious
to it, their hands held up above their heads, their eyes trance-like and
staring. Suddenly, I feel a sharp pain rip through me, clutching at my chest.
The feeling is eerily familiar – one I will never forget from the night of
Buffy's seventeenth birthday.
My first thought is to panic. Tara was right, I am going
to lose my soul. I have to get as far away from here as possible before I lose
control completely and Angelus takes over. I fight my way through the rushing
air, pushing past a group of slack-jawed soldiers and out the door, my
movements agonisingly slow. Staggering out into the cool night I can only manage
a few more steps before collapsing completely on the ground. My whole body
seems suffused with pain now and I know I only have moments left, just seconds
before…
A bright flash of light emanates from the library,
pulsing across my vision with blinding intensity. A bolt of electricity
like a lightning strike hits me and I emit a loud howl of pain, just as I feel
a jolt in my chest and my heart starts beating. I gasp for breath,
choking on the oxygen filling my long disused lungs. My limbs ache as blood
rushes back into them, replenishing my live, working cells. My God, I'm alive!
I'm human – my shanshu – it actually happened!
Scrambling painfully to my feet – my now very mortal
flesh beginning to show some of its wounds – I hurry back inside the building.
Buffy. I have to find her. When this happened last time, on our forgotten day,
it wasn't right. Now, though, it is. We've closed the Hellmouth and stopped the
apocalypse and now I have my reward. I still think I have a long way to go
before I can be fully redeemed, but this is a start, this is an incentive to
carry on and not lose faith. There are other ways to do good in the world aside
from killing demons and vampires. The long journey that is my life takes a new
turn today and for once, at last, I can see an end to it.
I can also see happiness ahead in my future – a possible
chance for Buffy and I to be together. Thoughts of Riley briefly cross my mind,
but I push them away. It's all details now, minor considerations in light of
the bigger picture, which I can suddenly perceive with startling clarity. I
love her. I love her so much and I can't walk away from her one single time
more. I can't give her up ever again. This time I'm not going to fight against
our relationship – I'm going to fight for it.
Stumbling into the old library I desperately scan the
room, trying to see her. I spot a group of dazed soldiers, their faces breaking
out in grins as they realise we have won the battle. Willow and Tara sit
collapsed in each other's arms, rocking one another tenderly as the emotional
exertion of the magic they cast takes its toll. Xander and Wesley are helping
up Anya and Cordelia respectively, checking to see if the girls are all right
then exchanging happy hugs and kisses. My eyes travel on. Where is she?
Where is she?
Then I catch a glimpse of platinum blonde hair – Spike –
bent over a body on the floor. Oh my God! NO! Rushing over across the
room I yell at him. "Get away from her!"
Spike backs away from the body and I am confused by the
genuine distress in his eyes. I look down at Buffy – my beloved Buffy –
and all I see is blood. My stomach cramps and I think I am going to vomit. I
want to turn away, but I can't. My eyes are locked on the sight of her t-shirt
soaked through a deep red and her ashen face set in pain.
"Bloody Hell, mate!" Spike exclaims. "What happened to
you?"
I ignore his question, instead kneeling down besides
Buffy to inspect her wounds. Her breathing is ragged and her pulse is weak, but
it's still there. Not for long though at the rate she is losing blood. My
entire body fills with utter panic. Have to do something. Have to save her
life.
"We need to get her to a hospital, now!" I shout at
Spike, but he shakes his head.
"There's no time. She'll be dead before you can even get
her in the ambulance. I can save her for you, though." He slips his face into
its vampire features, just in case I failed to get his meaning in the first
place.
"Don't even touch her!" I growl at him, the sound much
less threatening now that I am human.
"C'mon Angelus," Spike persists. "Don't be such a prick.
Would you rather she died?"
I look down at Buffy's tiny form, her tanned skin, her
hair golden as the sun. "Buffy would rather she died," I reply with absolute
certainty, reaching for a stake in my pocket and brandishing it at Spike. "Now,
get away from her before I'm forced to break that promise I made."
"Fine, have it any way you like," he backs away from me,
his hands held up in the air, palms facing outwards. "Just know that when she's
dead it'll be your fault."
I don't remember exactly what happened next – it's all
too much of a blur, filed in my mind somewhere with all those snapshots of
adrenaline fuelled battles, where instinct took over and rational thought
ceased to exist. I think I picked Buffy up. I cradled her in my arms and ran
out into the street. I stumbled out in front of a car making the vehicle come
to a screeching halt and the driver leap out yelling. Then he saw Buffy and the
blood that now drenched me as well as her – strong, powerful Slayer blood that
meant nothing to me in my human form. There was no lust, no heady, overpowering
scent, no demon screaming inside me, just genuine horror that Buffy was hurt
and dying even as I watched, even as I breathed. With every strengthened beat
of my heart hers was getting weaker.
I babbled something incoherent to the driver, words that
I will never recall now, and the next thing I knew there was an ambulance.
Paramedics pulled me away from her, stuck needles in her arms, pumped their
hands over her chest, flashing blue lights blurred through my tears. Cordelia
and Willow led me away and the next thing I knew I was sitting here in the
hospital waiting room, my head between my knees, trying to remember how to
prey.
I look up and around at the people who have joined me
here. Willow and Xander huddle together across the other side of the room,
heads bowed, brows knotted in concern. Tara, Anya, Wesley and Cordelia stand in
an uneasy group by the soda machine, looking caught in a dilemma between
leaving and staying. But there is one person missing who should be here.
"Where's Riley?" I ask quietly.
Willow looks up at me with a tear-streaked face. "We-we
lost him in the fight. He, uh, fell into the Hellmouth."
"Oh," is all I can think to say in reply to this. I
suppose I am a little sorry that Riley's dead, but at the moment his loss
doesn't even register on my radar. All I can think of is Buffy and the
possibility she might die too. Later I can fully process my reaction to the
news – my pain over Buffy's grief, guilt over hatred of a man who did nothing
to deserve it, secret jubilation that my competition for Buffy's affection has
now been eliminated – but for now I just nod vaguely and return to my
frantically worried haze.
"Has anyone called Joyce?" The thought suddenly occurs to
me.
Wesley nods. "The hospital are trying to reach her."
"Good," I reply with difficulty. "She should be here."
"Angel," Cordelia speaks up hesitantly. "Are you okay?"
I wave away her concern with my hand. "I'm fine."
"But-but, your shanshu, it happened. You're human
– that's got to be something pretty big to adjust to."
I turn to fix her with an intense stare. "At the moment it's
really not something I would rather think about."
Cordelia nods and backs away, an uneasy silence settling
over the room. This state continues for a while longer. Five minutes pass. Ten.
Half an hour, with the only activity being hushed whispers and the light
shuffling of feet. Then a doctor comes into the room, his expression serious. I
immediately rise to my feet expecting – fearing – to hear the worst. Please
don't let her be dead. Please God…
"Are any of you family?" The doctor asks.
We exchange uncertain looks, unsure of what to say in
reply. We are none of us related to Buffy, but what difference does that make,
it doesn't mean we love her any less. If her father – whom she has not seen for
years – walks in this door now, should he be treated as more important to Buffy
than any of the people in this room, just because he shares her blood?
Eventually Xander speaks up. "We're all family."
The doctor glances over our little group suspiciously,
registering our dishevelled appearances and assorted injuries. After a moment's
indecision I think he decides he would rather not know about whatever it is we
have been involved in and instead chooses to announce his news.
"Ms Summers was brought in with a penetrating trauma to
the chest. Her heart stopped briefly in the field, but we managed to restart it
with a combination of aggressive drug therapy and cardiopulmonary massage. We
performed emergency surgery to repair a tear to her aorta, which went without
complications and she seems to be recovering well."
My brain takes a while to catch up with my ears and I
have to replay the doctor's speech several times in my head before I can
understand his meaning. Recovering well. "So, she's going to be okay?"
The doctor nods, allowing himself a small smile. "She
should be fine. Of course there is a slight risk of damage associated with
oxygen deprivation due to the cardiac arrest, but due to her age and fitness I
don't think there should be a problem."
He continues throwing medical terms at me but I stop
listening. All I can think of is that she's going to be okay. Buffy is going to
live. I hadn't quite realised exactly how much I'd doubted that possibility
until this exact moment when the relief hits me and every inch of tension seems
to drain out of my body. I collapse back into my seat, almost on the verge of
laughter. She's going to be fine and everything is okay. Finally this nightmare
is ending.
"Can we see her?" I interrupt.
The doctor frowns. "Perhaps it would be pertinent to wait
until you've heard all the news before going to see Ms Summers."
"Why what else is there?" Willow asks in a shaky voice.
"Is there something you haven't told us?"
The doctor pauses and for one agonising moment I am sure
my world is going to come crashing down around my ears once more. "I'm afraid
to have to tell you that she's lost the baby."
My mouth goes dry and I can almost physically feel the
blood draining out of my face. "What?"
"Unfortunately, miscarriages in the first trimester are commoner
than you'd think. And with this level of trauma – "
"She was pregnant?" I ask in a voice barely above a
whisper.
The doctor nods. "Yes, six weeks along we think. Didn't
you know?"
He calls his question after me even as I am striding out
of the waiting room door. Buffy was pregnant with Riley's child. Suddenly, her
entire motivation for her engagement with Riley becomes clear. They were having
a baby together, they were going to get married, be a proper family. And now
both he and the baby are dead. The news is going to devastate Buffy and I was
arrogant enough to think that she'd just forget about him and jump into my arms
now that I'm human, that I could make everything better for her. Well, I can't.
I don't belong with Buffy and I never have – human or not – and I was a fool to
ever believe that I did.
Buffy:
Everything hurts. My chest aches and my head feels like
it's been stuffed with cotton wool. But it's a good feeling, because it shows
I'm still alive. And if I'm alive then so is the rest of the world. We did it;
we stopped the apocalypse. We sealed off the Hellmouth, but it wasn't without
its price.
Riley is dead. Really, finally gone. It's difficult to
believe that I will never see him again. The whole of my life – however long that
may be – Riley will never just walk into a room or pick up the phone and call
me. It's an overwhelming concept and one I can't really bring myself to
understand. In my years as the Slayer I've seen so much death, but I've also
seen what it's like beyond death. I died myself and yet I came back. I thought
I killed Angel, but he returned from Hell too. I'm always seeing corpses rise
again as vampires, so I'm not sure I can accept Riley's death yet. I just keep
thinking, give it another day, another week, another month and he'll be back
telling me it was all a horrible mistake, looking up at me with hopeful eyes
and a goofy grin.
But he won't. He won't be coming back from this and I'm
not sure how I feel about that yet. It's awful that he's dead, that he might be
suffering somewhere – I never wanted for that to happen. But I don't know if
I'm grieving yet, if I've sunk into the despair that should come with the loss
of the man I love. But then perhaps there's another reason for that, one I'm
not prepared to face at moment. For now I just feel empty and there's another
reason for that too.
The baby's gone. Nobody has been in to tell me but I know
anyway. It's like how I knew I was pregnant in the first place. That presence
which sat in the base of my stomach, like a lead weight, has suddenly vanished
leaving in its place a lightness born mostly of relief. I know it's bad to feel
this way, but I wasn't ready to be a mother. It wasn't meant to happen like
this, so having a miscarriage is the best way the situation could have ended
really. It makes me sad to add the life of my unborn child to the tally of
those lost and I'll probably cry a little bit over it later. But I can't get
too upset because I know that this is my second chance at life.
I'm
free from the old Buffy, the Slayer who resided over the Hellmouth, the one
whose future seemed so inevitable just twelve hours ago. I could have so easily
died in the battle – I was certainly injured severely enough – but I didn't. I
lived and there has to be a reason for that. I survived so I could start over,
be who I want to be, do the things I want to do. I'm finally liberated from my
duty, from owed loyalties, from responsibilities I never asked for in the first
place. It's going to take a little bit of getting used to, but at the moment
it's an idea I think I could warm to. No more Hellmouth, no more apocalypse to
avert, just Buffy Summers ordinary college girl. Sounds pretty good to me.
A
familiar tingle shoots down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck seem
to stand on end. My heart quickens its beating and my pulse rate soars, the
numbers on the monitor by the hospital bed climbing rapidly. My eyes shoot open
and I twist around towards the doorway, wincing with the pain of the effort.
"Angel?"
I call out in a small voice.
The
door swings open slowly and Angel walks into the room, a wry smile of his face,
his shoulders slumped almost as if he is trying to make himself smaller somehow
in order to fit into the tiny room. He comes and sits in a chair by my bed, his
eyes sweeping over the various tubes and machines surrounding me.
"I
just wanted to come and see if you were okay," he says. "Before I leave."
I
try to not feel the bitter disappointment that wells up inside of me. "You're
going?"
"Well,
everything's done here, right?" He replies quietly. "You don't need me
anymore."
"I-I
guess…" I mumble in reply, turning my body away from his, so he can't see the
tears in my eyes. What was I expecting him to do? To say? Just because a demon
clawed me through the heart while I was saving the world doesn't mean
anything's changed between Angel and I. And just because I've gotten used to
having him around again, because I've reawakened the part of my heart that will
always belong to him, doesn't mean he's going to stay forever. He was always
going to go back to LA and I was always going to resume my life in Sunnydale.
He has demons to conquer, battles to fight and wars to win that I am even less
a part of now than I ever was. I'm just going to have to accept that no matter
how right Angel and I feel together, we're just another of a long list of
things in my life that aren't meant to be.
"I'm
sorry," Angel says. "About Riley and…everything else…"
I
shake my head, reaching out to clasp his hand tightly. "I'm sorry too, Angel,
really, truly I am."
He
leans over me, lowering his lips to my forehead in a soft kiss. "I love you,
Buffy Summers," he whispers barely loud enough for me to hear. I force a
tearful smile as he pulls away again, moving to leave the room, his hand
entwined with mine until the last possible second.
The
door bangs shut behind him and the tears come properly now. I can't explain why
Angel just leaving for another city two hours away breaks my heart a thousand
times over, whereas Riley's death hardly scratches it. And at this precise
moment I don't even want to force myself to think about it. I just want to
savour the lingering feeling of Angel's hot skin against mine, his moist lips
pressed against my forehead, his breath grazing my cheek.
My
heart skips a beat as my tired, confused brain catches up with the world around
me. Angel's breath. Did I just feel him breathing, his skin warm and his
face flushed? Did I hear the sound of his heart beat as he leant close to me,
or was it just my imagination?
Either
way I have to know. I have to be sure. I pull myself painfully out of bed,
ignoring the dizziness that hits me almost immediately. Ripping the IV lines
hastily out of my arm and the monitor leads off my chest, I stumble out of the
door into the hallway. There I see Angel's rapidly retreating form, his black
leather duster swirling out behind him like it always did.
"Angel!"
I yell as I stagger after him, my voice coming out as more of a strangled
croak.
He
turns around almost immediately, a look of surprised concern on his face. Like
a woman possessed I continue towards him, pushing my body through the agony of
every step because I know that each will bring me closer towards him.
"Buffy?"
He calls out anxiously, hurrying to my side and arriving there just in time to
catch me as my effort becomes too much to maintain and my knees buckle
underneath me. He holds me steady in his strong arms and I place my hand flat
on his chest. Sure enough, a steady throb reverberates there and I gaze up at
him in absolute wonder.
"Angel,
you're…you're human…" My face breaks out into a huge smile. "You're alive!"
He
pulls me tightly into his embrace, burying his face in my hair. "I know," he
replies, his tears dampening my neck. "I know."
To be continued…just one
more to go now!!